Since I was not able to attend PAX 2010 in Seattle — actually I was a there but not allowed to purchase a one day pass — I would like to present a compendium of trade show reports from various blog and news sources.

Without further ado here they are:

• Cameron Sorden from Digital Life does a great job in reporting his favorites from PAX 2010 — good analysis here!
• Wadstomp’s Gaming Blog journeyed to PAX 2010 and penned: My Top 5 Games From PAX -  Check out his comments on the upcoming MMOs: Guild Wars 2, Rift Planes of Telara and Tela.
• Massively has a nice write-up with their PAX 2010: Hands on with Rift: Planes of Telara.
• Kotaku has an article on their impressions of Duke Nukem: Forever which finally made an appearance at PAX in Seattle. Also be sure to check out their revealing article which explores how Duke Nukem Was Brought Back to Life.
• Hardware Canucks have a nice video that shows us their Guild Wars 2 Gameplay Impressions.

Expect more reports from Seattle to arrive as PAX attendees get down to writing their articles in the days ahead.

If anyone has any other interesting PAX 2010 impressions links please reply to this article and I’ll be sure to add them in.

-Wolfshead

Post from: Wolfshead Online

PAX 2010 Seattle News Reports from the Blogosphere

Today I showed up at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle expecting to purchase a one day ticket to see the PAX 2010 geekfest but was greeted with monster banners prominently and even proudly proclaiming that the event was SOLD OUT.

Over a month ago, I tried to purchase a one day Friday ticket online but they were sold out. I was led to believe that tickets would be available at the gates. How wrong I was.

Silly me. If only I had read the news bulletin issued by the Penny Arcade people issued a few days ago I would have not wasted my valuable time showing up. BigDownload.com reports on this news:

Last month, all the three day tickets for PAX Prime 2010 sold out. Now the official Penny Arcade Expo web site has posted word that all of the one day tickets for the Seattle game event next weekend are gone as well. So if you think you can just show up at the door of the Washington State Trade and Convention Center hoping to buy event a one day ticket, you can pretty much stay home.

Needless to say I’m quite disappointed. I was really looking forward to trying out GuildWars2 for myself and even speaking with some of the ArenaNet devs. I had a camera with me and fully intended on publishing an extensive article on my findings.

So to get to the bottom of this fiasco, I telephoned one of the officials who works at the Washington State Convention Center and they explained that the criteria for being sold out is based on establishing a safe occupancy number. So at some point the event sold out using this formula.

Another of my concerns is that after the 1 day Friday mailed out badges were considered sold out, it was very unclear as to how a person could purchase a non-mailed out pass. Check out the official PAX website for yourself — there information is scant and not very well explained.

To the PAX organizers I say this: you knew full well that attendance would be higher this year and you could have extended the duration of the event by 1, 2 or even 3 days — even a week probably would have been appropriate but you did not. Why didn’t you, given the overwhelming demand?

Bottom line: to avoid disappointing people make the bloody event longer!

Sure, I could have paid more for PAX badges as they were being sold outside by scalpers but I wasn’t sure if the badges were legitimate and I didn’t want to break the law. Besides, by then I was livid. I really feel sorry for anyone that showed up and spend a lot of money traveling there expecting to buy a one day pass to see PAX 2010.

Luckily, I live north of Seattle so I didn’t incur any costs but I did set aside one day of my life where I could have been doing other things to attend. I guess I should look at the bright side; at least I won’t have to worry about throwing out all of the useless swag in a week.

-Wolfshead

Post from: Wolfshead Online

Turned Away at PAX 2010 in Seattle

Over the years, I’ve probably spent too much time obsessing about my obsession for one particular MMO: which of course is EverQuest. What is it about this enigmatic game/experience/world that keeps haunting me? Pondering EQ’s past, present and future has been somewhat of a fixation for me and many other MMO veterans who long to recreate those heady, magical days we ventured forth into an unknown and foreboding Norrath.

So the news of the announced development of EverQuest 3 or EverQuest Next has been a fascinating addition to this mental hobby of mine. The people that brought us the first 3D MMO, have a great opportunity to put into practice all of the lessons of successful MMO development that have come to light in the past 10 years.

Let me be blunt: as far as I’m concerned, this is SOE’s last chance to get it right.

I’ve been jotting down my thoughts about what I as a game designer would do if given the chance to recreate and reboot the world of EverQuest. It would probably take far too long to create a new series of polished articles on what made EQ great in the first place (search my website for previous articles on EQ for that) and I’m not naive to believe that simply recreating the original EQ would even work given today’s market. Rather I’d like to publish my thoughts in no particular order in a stream of consciousness format.

First let me recap how I feel about the original EverQuest.

How I Feel About EverQuest in 17 Words

Danger. Risk. Survival. Freedom. Mystery. Fantasy. Discovery. Camaraderie. Community. Escape. Defeat. Victory. Gain. Loss. Excellence. Skill. Excitement.

Great art makes you feel something. EQ made me feel many things. Contrast that to today’s heavily scripted MMOs that don’t make me feel anything except contempt. These new breed of slick MMOs are largely a cold, lifeless, predictable and repetitive series of scripted experiences dressed up with beautiful artwork and exquisitely detailed animations.

Like the movie Groundhog Day, today’s MMOs lack capacity to change. And the worst crime of all is that players are not allowed to impact the world as per the decree of the autocratic game designers. Instead of having your own experiences, you must experience their world, their way. Take it or leave it. Not much of a choice is it?

The Magic of EQ Explained

The initial attraction of MMOs for me was that they allowed you to experience many deep and visceral emotions while safely and vicariously playing via an avatar. EverQuest made all of that possible.

In a way MMO’s are akin to the experience of watching a horror movie at the cinema (except that you are a spectator). There you are scared out of your wits but in the back of your mind you know it’s not real and you can leave you seat and resume your safe and predictable life.

EverQuest’s Norrath was a fantastical and unforgiving world where fellow adventurers banded together to try to gain victories over enemies with impossible odds. Nothing was ever easy in Norrath and we liked it!

You had everything to lose and everything to gain. Player reputation actually counted for something.

Nobody would dare behave like an idiot in public because they knew word would get around and they’d be treated like a pariah and they’d be unable to find groups and advance. And unlike the MMOs today, levels actually meant something. Loot was actually earned not doled out like a welfare check.

Players also had the freedom to self-actualize and to create emergent gameplay. As noted previously, players created their own stories and memories. Contrast this with a tightly scripted and totalitarian philosophy of control that is exemplified by MMOs like Blizzard’s WoW.

If SOE can incorporate 20% of what the original EQ had then they will be on the right track.

Why did SOE Get it Wrong with EQ2?

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. SOE needs to take an honest post-mortem look at why EQ2 failed to generate the success of EQ and why it paled in comparison to WoW.

SOE needs to resist the temptation to create a sanitized, newbie friendly world where player freedom is so restricted that drama and conflict have been erased. Many of the features of EQ that gave us so many memories were unwittingly created by the competition that ensued as a result of a limited supply of mobs and scarce resources.

In their desire to create a MMO utopia, the naive EQ2 designers failed to realize the importance of conflict. Blizzard with it’s over-reliance on instancing, also has failed to appreciate the importance of creating a virtual world where there are struggles that need to be overcome. The best struggles of course are between players; after all, massively multi-player games are all about people. How tragic that today’s MMO’s have lost this focus.

The developers of EQ3 should see conflict not as a problem but as a good and noble thing; the glass is hall full if you design it right and have the courage to follow through.

Allow players to change the world. Player created trains were an act of desperation and a cry for help from players who wanted to find a way to impact the world and other players. Players today are frustrated that they don’t really have an impact on their worlds so they end up misbehaving in chat channels.

This idea that struggle and conflict must be replaced by entitlement and convenience is misguided and has infected most MMOs today and made them dull and predictable. This design philosophy was meant to solve many customer service problems inherent with EQ but the result was that ended up discouraging cooperation among players.

Reinventing the MMO Wheel

SOE needs to forget the quest directed on-rails, theme park approach made popular by Blizzard; we already have enough of these paint by numbers MMOs in circulation. Enough is enough.

SOE needs to create a world that is fantastic and magical yet harsh and unforgiving. Players must again fear the unknown and respect the wilderness. Wild means wild. MMOs should not feel like a miniature golf course or a McDonald’s restaurant for kids. Those that want safety and guaranteed outcomes can play Farmville and Frontierville.

For SOE to succeed they are going to have to introduce enough new features to take MMOs to the next level. Simply making a WoW facsimile for Norrath is unacceptable. SOE needs to create shock-waves throughout the MMO world.

SOE needs to propel the MMO experience to the next level if they have any hope of taking the MMO by storm. SOE is going to have to do what Apple did for cell phones when they released the iPhone if they truly want to make an impact on the video game industry.

Analyzing the Competition

Everyone in the business world must do a thorough analysis of the competition. Success is based finding weaknesses in the current market or creating an entirely new market.

SOE should play to their strengths:

• Respect the established EQ lore not enslaved to someone else’s intellectual property  (i.e. Lord of the Rings).
• Adopt the original vision of a world where anything can happen — read the mind-blowing and inspirational original official EQ manifesto currently only available at my website.
• Get off the rails and return to less linear, more open-ended gameplay.
• Take advantage of the goodwill of your existing fan community – we have thousands of gamers that have played and loved EQ over the years.
• Cater to adults and adult niche markets (mature adults, female gamers, family guilds, etc.) instead of focusing on pre-teens and teens like Blizzard does with WoW. Players who want a dumbed-down shallow MMO experience already have enough options.

Capitalize on the weaknesses of Blizzard’s WoW:

• Offer player housing as WoW has no player housing.
• Offer role-play support and mechanics. WoW has almost zero support and mechanics for role-players.
• Offer live GM events as WoW has no Live GM events.
• Provide more opportunities for player freedom and player impact contrasted with WoW’s reliance on heavily scripted quests and narratives — those MMOs will be dead soon anyways
• Community is a commodity! Blizzard doesn’t understand this. Promote a good community by enforcing chat rule in contrast with Blizzard’s shameful and horrible mismanagement of WoW community which is a cesspool.
• Implement the original EQ’s accelerated day/night schedule — WoW does this horribly and sentences players who play late at night to a lifetime of eternal darkness.
• Have different NPCs and mobs spawn during the day and at night – WoW completely misses the boat here.
• Resist the temptation to regurgitate the sophomoric pop culture references that WoW has in your MMO.

It’s also worth noting that by the time EQ3 is released Blizzard may be releasing their 2nd gen MMO. By the time SOE releases a MMO that can compete with WoW, Blizzard may well be advancing the genre even further into the stratosphere. Other MMOs by 38 Studios and ArenaNet will also be out by then as well. It’s anyone’s game to win.

More Features and Concepts I’d Like to See in EQ3

Here are some additional thoughts that I’ve put into bullet points regarding EQ3 that I’m too lazy to organize but I figured they might be worth putting out there (Warning: WoW forum posters, ADD and TLDR people skip ahead as this is a long list — you have been warned):

• Death should mean something. Players won’t respect your world if death is meaningless. Failure without loss or penalty not only makes bad players it removes a sense of risk and excitement from your world. The fear of death is a time-tested way to create community and player interdependency. It brings people together in the real world and it does the same in the virtual world. Death penalties can be gradually introduced into the game.
• EQ promoted group interdependency — give players reasons to band together. Give all classes castable buffs and unique skills that make every feel valued and wanted.
• Allow for more freedom and chaos as that creates drama, tension and conflict which are essential to give a world meaning and immediacy. Don’t fall into the WoW trap of limited player freedom.
• Allow soloing but don’t promote it. Promote grouping and player interdependence but don’t penalize soloing.
• Do not blindly accept the notion that your MMO needs to have instancing in order to be a success. Instancing is bad and lazy game design.
• If you are going to capitulate to instancing at the very least dungeons should have a communal and competitive aspect.
• The idea of quests as done by Blizzard WoW needs to be completely avoided as the prime focus of gameplay.
• Quests should be rare and special. No player should be able to have 25 quests running at once.
• NPC’s need to be vastly improved with regard to interactivity with players.
• Raids in MMOs are akin to learning how to do a complex dance routine. This is a MMO, not Riverdance. Give mobs better AI which will keep players on their toes and make them think.
• Stop leashing NPCs. No more Stepford Wives NPC behavior.
• Don’t allow addons to do the players thinking for them. If  your MMO is too complicated that it needs addons then reduce the complexity. Points at Blizzard.
• Resist the temptation to shower players with too much loot. Loot should be earned, not bestowed.
• Possibly a browser MMO? Free Realms engine proves it can be done.
• Planning a MMO these days is an advantage based on the past 10 years of successes and failures.
• Bring back a need to socialize and to build up community — good community not chaotic community. Good communities don’t happen by accident. Besides, a good community is a great selling point.
• Ensure that volunteer guides have a place in the world — empower the kind players in the community.
• Bring back the warmth and magic of Milo Cooper’s stylized original character artwork that was a big part of the magic of EQ.
• Hire real GMs (gamemasters) that actual proactively police the server and watch out for gold spammers, hackers and player harassment.
• EQ was largely a work in progress with very little planning ahead for expansions. Also many decisions were made at the beginning which affected how the game would evolve such as zone borders, trains, camping, open dungeons
• One thing is certain the graphics have to be outstanding. The days of ugly avatars that look like androids are over.
• Confuse and befuddle the powergamers and min-maxers — they are the angels of death of your MMO. By creating new paradigms for EQ3 everyone will be equal at the start.
• Figure out a way to make spoiler sites irrelevant. Perhaps procedurally created quests/tasks and loot.
• Bring back live events, random events and unique event experiences.
• Keep Station Money out of the game as much as possible. Not only is begging for your customers money shameful, it also destroys immersion. Remember immersion?
• SOE you need to figure out: who directs the player experience? The game designers or the players? Questing vs. player freedom? Hopefully you answered correctly.
• Slow down the speed of player advancement. Advancement is not a right, it is a privilege. Players will grind to the level cap and then complain that they are bored and this creates a top heavy world and a ghost-town in the lower levels.
• Resist the temptation to create disposable content that lacks replayability. The problem with many new MMOs like WoW is that when you are in a new zone, you feel like you are just passing through as you’re there briefly much like a tourist; you complete a few quests then it’s on to the next zone. Let players live and settle in a zone; make them feel like they belong. Let them get involved in the local culture and delve into factional disputes.

It’s Time to Change the Rules of the Game

More importantly EQ3 has to be a game changer. It should challenge and revolutionize everything we know about MMOs. That’s the only way to get the magic back. Magic after all is no longer magic once you know how the trick works. But in a risk averse world can SOE come up with something as compelling as the DIKU MUD in 3D formula that the original EQ had? It may take a miracle.

We need to be truthful and honest about the state of MMOs in 2010 and it’s this: MMOs are predictable and lifeless. This has led to the state of affairs where they have become completely deconstructed and demystified by most players. A symptom of this is that the practice of Theorycrafting has become the prime MMO player preoccupation. Players agonize over stats. Mathematics is not exciting. We are supposed to be adventurers not accountants!

SOE needs to create a sense of mystery all over and completely redefine and bury the equations and formulae from the curious eyes of the power gamers. As Raph Koster has said and I’m paraphrasing: when we learn, we have fun. Discovering and learning a new code needs to be part of the new EQ3. That’s going to take a lot of bold thinking in a MMO world dominated by the success Blizzard’s WoW.

Reflections from the Evercracked Documentary

After watching the entire Evercracked documentary I could not help feeling that SOE got lucky with EverQuest. It was a unique MMO that came out at the right time with many converging trends in technology such as graphic cards capable of 3D (remember 3DFX video cards?) and the ascendancy of the Internet and online gaming itself.

Luck aside, I do believe it was the backgrounds and experience of the people who created EQ who really made the difference. They were people who played MUDS, they played pen and paper games like Dungeons & Dragons. They really seemed to understand and appreciate the importance of role-playing and immersion. Contrast this with the people who are presently creating WoW and there is a universe of difference. There seems to be a generational shift and it shows.

Many of the older RPG’s used classic fantasy archetypes and of course character classes. These were well defined elements that were perfected over the period of many years. EQ needs to get back to the basics of what works. As one person at the Fanfaire EQ Next panel said:

With the original EQ I had 7 spell buttons, with EQ2 I had 52 buttons.

Today the average class in a MMO is swamped with too many abilities and buttons to press. Less is more. Simplify.

Lessons from Blizzard

There’s a big difference in simply copying WoW and making a clone and copying the Blizzard development philosophy. Here are things that Blizzard does well that any MMO company including SOE should copy:

• Easy to Learn Hard to Master – This mantra is a given in the industry. Failure to design your MMO this way means certain failure. (Note: this design philosophy was in fact coined by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell (not Blizzard) the father of video games many years ago which self-appointed custodians of all knowledge Wikipedia completely fails to mention.
• Do Not Release It Until It’s Ready – This is another standard that needs to be adhered to. The days of releasing barely tested, buggy garbage are over. SOE has been guilty of violating this rule on many occasions. In the past they emphasized quantity of expansions over quality and it was the cause for the demise of the original EQ.
• Stylized Art Direction – Realism is not a substitute for art direction in MMOs — especially for fantasy MMOs (Vanguard MMO screwed up here). SOE seems to have learned this lesson as evidenced with Free Realms and the exhortations of SOE employees at the recent Fanfaire EQ3 Panel.

Is SOE’s Corporate Culture Up to the Task?

With SOE over the years I’ve never gotten the feeling that it was a company that wanted to take gaming to the next level — something that Blizzard did with a culture of polish and development. Rather, SOE has seemed content to play it safe and “stay the course” so to speak.

I’m also very concerned about the corporate culture at SOE. I’ve heard horror stories from former employees over the years of overly aggressive and arbitrary managers. I’ve experienced direct outright incompetence, misconduct, favoritism back when I was a Senior Guide for EverQuest and heard of stories of cronyism perpetrated by certain SOE employees from impeccable sources.

The old boys club corporate culture at SOE where office politics and brown nosing is rewarded and people rise to the level of their incompetence hardly seems conducive to fostering the kind of environment where great video games are created.

Another requirement for EQ3 to succeed is that SOE will have to abandon the old ways of thinking that put all of their resources into placating established hardcore players with content and forgetting newbie players. This is the tragic mistake that characterized most of the expansions of the original EverQuest. The days of creating content that requires you to raid for 4-6 hours every night are over if they ever hope to entice a bigger demographic to play their new MMO.

Concluding Thoughts

Ten years ago the MMO universe was completely dominated by EverQuest. EQ was practically the only game in town. As EQ matured it developed some serious problems along the way which I chronicled in my 2004 Open Letter to SOE. Little by little what made EQ a masterpiece has been gutted in favor of appealing to the lowest common denominator.

SOE needs to reclaim EQ’s past greatness and legacy — only if they show courage and fortitude to stop relying on the focus groups, the bean counters, the metrics and the demographics to design their MMO.

Despite the odds being stacked against them, I’m very bullish on SOE and EQ3. I want them to succeed because we need serious alternatives to the Blizzard stranglehold of this industry.

EQ3 is SOE’s last chance to finally get it right and put SOE once again in the forefront of MMO development. For SOE to once again make magic they’re going to have to be able to compete with Blizzard Entertainment dominance of the MMO genre. This means that at the very least, SOE’s development philosophy (see Blizzard lessons above) will have to match and exceed Blizzard’s if they have any chance of succeeding.

Not only does the MMO need to be invented, SOE needs to be reinvented and EverQuest3 is a good chance to do it. There is no going back to the old ways of releasing buggy, unfinished, lackluster content. SOE will have to substantively change the way they make MMOs if they ever hope to dominate the market once again and produce a MMO worthy of the EverQuest name.

It’s time to lead, not follow. The ball is in your court Mr. Smedley.

-Wolfshead

Post from: Wolfshead Online

Reflections on the Upcoming EverQuest 3

Lately I’ve been enjoying the Cataclysm closed beta videos of a WoW enthusiast named John “TotalBiscuit” Bain. His videos are quite informative and entertaining to say the least. He also runs a blog called The Cynical Brit.

If you watch his videos using the highest resolution on YouTube and go full screen you can get some good idea of some of the changes coming our way in Blizzard’s next WoW expansion. I heartily recommend his videos. In particular, there’s a video review of the Dwarf/Gnome starter zone entitled: A case study in bad starting zone design that is exceptional.

Coldridge Valley Gets a Cold Reception

In that article John released a compelling video that demonstrates the changes found in the shared Dwarven/Gnomish starting zone of Coldridge Valley in Dun Morogh. You’ll notice that his main criticism is that the zone doesn’t have much in the way of narrative (storytelling) and fun quests.

He also contends that this is inconsistent compared to the polish that other newbie zones like the Worgen, Goblins and Trolls have gotten from Blizzard and creates a disparity that would prevent players from creating Dwarven and Gnome alts. He is absolutely correct.

What I find interesting is how he finds “killing” quests to be a bit of a bore. WoW is pretty much a game about killing mobs and taking their stuff. This may be a bit of cognitive dissonance as he is also a self-confessed raider. Raiders essentially just kill stuff don’t they?

He makes a lot of great points as far as inconsistencies are concerned. One glaring one is where a troll NPC just stands there and starts talking after you’ve just murdered a bunch of troll teenagers.

One thing you will notice is that Blizzard has made practically all of the trolls in the cave non-agro. I too noticed this change in a recent visit to Elwynn Forest starting area of Northshire Abbey. The Defias Thugs and even Garrick Padfoot the thug boss in the vineyards are all non-agro. The dumbing-down (read: let’s not alienate potential new subscribers) of WoW seems to be proceeding on schedule.

It seems that ultimately every MMO ends up being violated like this by meddling game designers with good intentions. I recall the sad day SOE made the guards in the original EverQuest Greater Faydark zone unattackable. I believe I quit EQ not long after.

Back to WoW, I always loved the Dwarf newbie zone. I was just happy to be transported to a magical land of beer guzzling dwarves. I marveled at seeing my tracks and the tracks of rabbits being made in the snow. Seeing your breath in the cold weather was also a great feature of that zone. Yet the simple magic of Dun Morogh is not enough for jaded gamers.

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us

From listening to his comments on this starter zone I get the impression that many players expect big budget God of War and Zelda like narratives in their MMOs now. Somehow the expectation that players must be entertained has crept into the psyche of modern MMO players.

I’m afraid Blizzard has raised the bar so high they may be victims of their own success. After Wrath of the Lich King, everyone will be expecting a Hollywood style Deathknight starter zone now.

The Art of Creating Newbie Zones

Creating compelling starter zones is a tricky business. You want them to be amazing but not too amazing as you’ll never be able to compete with it and end up creating false expectations among your players.

One example was the starting experiences in Turbine’s Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar. I’ll never forget when the village of Archet was burning and I had to run through it and defeat some villains. It was amazing. Somehow the rest of Middle-earth — especially the levels that followed — never managed to recreate the pulse pounding excitement of those starting areas.

-Wolfshead

Post from: Wolfshead Online

Someone More Cynical Than Me

Something has changed about the MMO experience in the past six years. Chances are you probably haven’t even noticed it but you can probably feel it just the same. MMO critics and veteran players all suspect there is something amiss with today’s MMOs but can’t quite put their finger on it.

Part of the answer to this riddle may be that the intentions, goals and objectives of MMO companies have changed from being primarily about creating a world of adventure to creating an amusement park. MMOs have become all about delivering short bursts of “fun”. Making sure you the player is entertained at every moment has become the holy grail of game design.

Design based on delivering instant gratification for the masses has replaced a philosophy of hard won satisfaction gleaned from the rigors and challenges of survival in a dangerous virtual world. This change of design focus has fundamentally altered the MMO experience for the worse.

So how did this happen?

From Fun to Adventure and Back Again

To learn the answer and to establish a point of reference, we need to take a time machine back to eleven years ago when MMOs like Ultima Online and EverQuest rocked the video game industry to its core. These new multi-player online games unexpectedly raised the stakes to new levels. No longer was a video game all about having fun and amusement. It was something deeper, visceral, engaging and transcendent; an experience within a world.

As I look back on my 4 year stint with EverQuest it is clear to me now that was never about the pursuit of fun. It became my passion and my hobby. It took every skill I had to survive and advance in a world beset with danger, mystery and hardship. The rewards of adventure is adventure itself. And that was enough for me.

Adventure is for Adults

First we need to rediscover why we are here and why we even care about MMOs and virtual worlds.

But, let’s examine what adventure means. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word adventure as:

1 a : an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks b : the encountering of risks <the spirit of adventure>
2 : an exciting or remarkable experience <an adventure in exotic dining>

I daresay the majority of people who enter MMOs today would prefer to be immersed in a virtual world of adventure than deposited into a theme park of amusement and fun if offered the choice. Sadly, that choice is not available in today’s market. Instead the player just follows along the predetermined storyline that the quest designers lay out in front of them. Never questioning, never deviating from the golden path.

Real adventure is not scripted, nor is real heroism. When you really stop to think about it, there is something noble and worthwhile about adventure as great deeds and experiences beyond our imagination are possible even if experienced virtually. More importantly, these accomplishments and experiences are our own — not the property of the quest designer.

When one thinks of the memorable feats throughout history, mythology and literature it’s hard to think that any of those heroes had were motivated by the desire for self-gratification otherwise known as “fun”. To heed the call of adventure means to put oneself at great risk and to make sacrifices for some greater good or cause. Frodo and Sam’s quest to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom was not motivated by fun. Instead they were motivated and inspired by a selfless sense of duty and honor.

Fun is For Children

My problem with using fun as a criteria for designing MMOs is that unlike adventure it lacks the potential to transport the player to a place beyond mere self-gratification. Experiencing fun for its own sake is shallow, meaningless and lacks purpose and possibility.

The production of fun in a video game is all about inducing a sense of unearned euphoria and delight within the player. It’s all about creating highs but with no commensurate lows. It’s a violation of the basic law of the universe that says there can be no pleasure without pain, no light without darkness, no harvest without planting, no reward without risk.

So let’s look at a definition for the word fun:

1 : what provides amusement or enjoyment; specifically : playful often boisterous action or speech <full of fun>
2 : a mood for finding or making amusement <all in fun>

There is a chasm of difference between the definition of fun and the definition of adventure. Once you consider the full impact of both words you start to get hints at why things have gone terribly wrong for those of us that desire a deeper, more mature MMO experience.

Both pursuits seem to be characteristic of different levels of maturity. While fun can be experienced by grown adults, it’s something that is more appropriately aimed at children and teenagers. Contrast that with the notion of adventure which is often thrust upon both willing and unwilling adults.

There’s also big gap in the level of seriousness of both pursuits. Fun is seen as lighthearted amusement while adventure is seen as more sober and solemn endeavor fraught with danger and risk. Even the idea of a quest which has become a major building block of today’s MMOs seems more at home with the concept of adventure than fun. Nobody goes on a quest to amuse themselves.

How Adventure Got Replaced by Fun

The MMO experience that kept us playing for hours on the edge of our chairs got replaced in a bait and switch scheme concocted by a new breed of MMO companies like Blizzard. We showed up in worlds like Azeroth looking for adventure and instead were fed a banquet of mechanics designed to appeal to a wider demographic. MMOs at their inception were much more then just a series of fun mechanics haphazardly sewn together; they were created by people with a consistent and cohesive vision for a world — not a game.

Eventually the notion of a world gave way to the game and the sense of adventure gave way to simplistic fun as the quest for more subscribers and more profits became the overriding design philosophy.

Despite the fact that Blizzard could not have made WoW if there was no EverQuest (their own words from the EverCracked documentary) WoW is in no way a spiritual successor to EverQuest.

Hannibal Lecter Deconstructs Blizzard

The key to understanding why MMOs are they way there are today is to understand Blizzard itself. In the film the Silence of the Lambs Hannibal Lecter quotes the great Roman patrician Marcus Aurelius and provides us some insight:

Lecter: “First principles, Clarice. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing, ask: What is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do this creature you seek?

Blizzard has a clear track record of making successful video games. This is their true nature. The battle plan for the World of Warcraft was to make a fun game disguised as a MMO. Let’s be honest here, the “world” part of World of Warcraft is window dressing and was never taken seriously or given proper respect.

Making a game is far less lofty process than making a virtual world. When you create a game it absolves the creators of the higher responsibility inherent in creating a world. Tolkien created a world, Blizzard created a game.

Blizzard uses an internal design philosophy called concentrated coolness. Everything must be larger than life and have the capacity to amuse and enthrall the player. Everything that Blizzard puts into WoW must pass this “fun” test. Instead of focusing on long term goals of what’s best for a MMO, the concentrated coolness process becomes the goal unto itself. WoW has essentially become a patchwork collection of cool and fun mechanics instead of a coherent virtual world. In applying this theory they have missed the point entirely and eviscerated the MMO experience.

The Goal Determines the End User Experience

Words have meaning. The terminology you use can’t help but influence your final product. When your design vocabulary is constantly punctuated with words like “fun” and “coolness” as a recent Cataclysm Press Event interview with Blizzard Lead Designer Cory Stockton demonstrated, then you have an insight into the heart of the problem.

If your intent is to amuse and titillate players with constant injections of fun and rewards (with little tangible risk) the result will be far different than a MMO that has adventure and survival as its ultimate goal. The mission statement of the MMO whether it be fun or adventure or variants of each is the final determinant of the end user experience.

This is precisely why WoW is completely different than EverQuest. Both were designed with vastly different goals in mind by people with different visions, outlooks and backgrounds.

Welcome to WoWville

But let’s accept that many adults today are chasing the dragon of fun; at least they have thousands of video game titles from which to satiate their hunger. Yet for those of us that seek high stakes online adventure there are barely any choices.

For me this is boils down to the failure of broadly targeted MMOs to appeal to mature adults. Those of us that aspire to higher notions of adventure and challenge have been starved out by the dominant Disney kiddie culture more recently epitomized by FarmVille and Free Realms. (Things have gotten so bad that even Brad McQuaid of EverQuest fame has decided to make a social/casual game.)

Even worse, we have come to accept and delight in sub-standard MMO content and mechanics. Real virtual adventurers have few if any niche based options that appeal to them that are created with a WoW budget. All they are left with is a one size fits all MMO model that is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator of player. Somehow every other form of entertainment including broadcasting and publishing has expanded by offering a myriad of choices and niches for people to explore — all except the MMO industry. Welcome to WoWville.

Video Games Have Helped Create A Culture of Perpetual Adolescence

I’ve thought a lot about what has happened to MMOs lately. Some of the conclusions I’ve arrived at are not pleasant to consider.

There is something unseemly about the pursuit of fun by grown adults. As a MMO veteran of 11 years, this is not what I signed up for. Part this problem is societal and a reflection of the pervasiveness of our youth culture where people today just refuse to grow up — aided and abetted by their enablers in the entertainment industry. Somehow the purpose of life has been reduced to finding ways to endlessly amuse oneself. Regrettably, our generation seems to be trapped in a culture of perpetual adolescence.

Thirty years ago people used to be ashamed of “playing video games” and being a gamer. When I see what MMOs have degenerated into and the current scourge of mindless “social” gaming on Facebook, I’m starting to wonder if that sense of societal shame was well placed.

Regarding My Personal MMO Journey

When I was a young adult I recall a few films that literally changed my life. Those films were defining moments for me and my world would never be the same.  As I walked out of the theater I felt a sense of enlightenment and empowerment; a feeling that anything and everything is possible. I’m not ashamed to admit that MMOs changed my life in a similar way.

As MMOs have continued to deteriorate over the years my articles have reflected the sense of gloominess and despair I feel about the state of things. At one point I used to really believe in MMOs — that was before the money people who control today’s MMO production took over. Perhaps I was naive and foolish as I once used to see MMOs as places of awe and wonder. The illusion is gone and the veil lifted. I now see the soulless money making machinery that is behind the curtain. The potential for greatness this genre once had is but a fading memory of what could have been.

I believe in a product design philosophy where you focus on creating a great product and then success follows. Anomalous companies like Apple operate like this; they create quality products they believe in and the public follows. Today, it’s all backwards in the MMO game industry. MMOs are primarily designed to appeal to wide demographics with the goal of making money first and making a masterpiece second. I’m sorry but I don’t find a mass market McDonald’s hamburger appealing when what I really want is filet mignon.

Concluding Thoughts

I am under no illusions that that many may fail to appreciate the subtle and not so subtle distinctions between the notions of fun and adventure. I understand too that the average MMO player has quite different expectations than what was typical 10 years ago.

Players today want to log on and experience a concentrated blast of shock and awe in their limited play session time. They want it all and they want it now. Everyone expects to be treated like hero without having done anything heroic and companies like Blizzard are only too happy to placate them.

While I was a video game designer, I always held the creation of fun (for the player) as the highest virtue. Keeping children and teenagers amused by my scripting was the number one priority of my craft. But fun should not be the exclusive mission statement for all MMOs. Instead of  A Theory of Fun for Game Design we need  A Theory of Adventure for MMO Design.

MMOs like WoW are more game than they are a virtual world. The World part of “World of Warcraft” has been more of a marketing gimmick than a legitimate passion of the Blizzard developers. It’s clear these guys are gamers first and foremost. They see MMOs through the primitive prism of fun and coolness. Virtual worlds are too experimental and metaphysical for them as Blizzard Lead Designer Jeff Kaplan has stated on numerous occasions.

The true culprit that blocks the pathway leading to real adventure via MMOs is the confining notion of a “game”. Since the highest virtue in a video game is the production of fun, the end result will always be World of Warcraft. The intrinsic limitations inherent in video games are not expansive enough to allow for the greater virtues of virtual worlds such as freedom, ownership, community and of course adventure to blossom. This is why I am so unceasingly critical of Blizzard; they have single-handedly gutted the meaning, purpose and end goals of the MMO experience. Instead of going forward, we’ve gone backwards.

Until the Blizzard design and goal philosophies are exposed, ridiculed and made obsolete by an innovative MMO company who is serious about creating a genuine platform for virtual adventure, we will be forever stuck spinning our wheels playing mere games.

-Wolfshead

Post from: Wolfshead Online

The Emasculation of MMOs: Part 2 – Fun is for Children, Adventure is for Adults

Twelve starving men sat down at a table. Before them was placed a sumptuous banquet. Then one of the men protested: “I don’t like salt…”. So in order not to offend him the others agreed to remove the salt from the table. Then another man exclaimed: “I detest pepper…”. So in order not to anger him they all consented to remove the pepper from the table. Each remaining man rose in turn and protested yet another ingredient until there was nothing left on the table. With nothing left to eat the twelve men died of hunger.

Sound familiar? That story is a metaphor for the disintegration of MMORPGs in recent years. One by one, mechanics and features that have caused the slightest inconvenience to players has been removed or watered down as thoughtless subscribers unconcerned about the long-term health of their MMO cheer from the sidelines.

It was while reading Keen’s superb series of articles entitled Old MMO Mechanics that I Like and You Probably Hate (which was inspired by an article at We Fly Spitfires) where I fully realized how much this genre has been so utterly devastated by MMO companies eager to pander to new subscribers.

MMOs are dying a death of a thousand cuts as the unintended consequence of meddling game designers eager to “improve” their MMOs by dumbing-down their mechanics has eviscerated the end user experience that made MMOs so unique. The sense of challenge, danger and mystery has been replaced by a feeling of entitlement, security and predictability.

Putting a Smiley Face on Death

The most egregious change symptomatic of this new philosophy of convenience-driven gameplay has been the trivialization of the death penalty. Because of this, death has been rendered meaninglessness in most MMOs. Players lose any respect they had for dying and death itself. Failure has a token cost of a few coins.

Death and any semblance of unpleasantness or player accountability for that matter have become persona non grata in our sanitized theme park MMOs. When’s the last time you even saw a player corpse in a major MMO?

By death what we are really talking about is the concept of risk. This can be distilled even further: dying in a MMO is all about risking the investment of your time.

Or at least it used to be…

Why We Need to Bring Risk Back

Look at any serious endeavor, sport or game. The ability to risk is what separates the men from the boys. The potential to lose everything is what makes high stakes games worth playing. Real risk makes victory taste sweeter and defeat more frustrating. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Without any measure of true risk, a rewards become inflationary, commonplace and pedestrian. When failure has little cost, players stop experiencing fear and its wise lessons. Learning to evaluate and mitigate risk also makes us better players as we will do all we can to avoid the consequences of losing.

Risk is the mother of every good and worthwhile aspect of MMORPGs. Challenge, community, camaraderie, player interdependence, socialization, immersion, respect for the world, respect for loot, respect for character progression — all are nourished from the wellspring of risk. Risk is what brings a virtual world to life and gives it immediacy and substance.

Years ago it was common to see debates about the relationship of risk versus reward on MMO discussion forums. Even the players back then rightly understood that you need sufficient amounts of risk to balance out rewards. Those players thrived on danger and even welcomed it. No longer. Rarely do we even speak of such matters as the prevailing game design philosophy seems to be KEEP THE PLAYERS HAPPY and WELL FED by:

• bestowing players with unearned praise and status
• granting easy character progression
• de-emphasizing player ability and skill
• distracting players by showering them with loot

Conclusion

As players eventually lose interest in MMOs and stop playing because of the constant watering down of the fundamentals the remaining players who are stupid enough to put up with it become the majority. If a restaurant that caters to vegetarians starts putting more and more meat on the menu it’s only a matter of time before the original patrons (vegetarians) will no longer patronize the restaurant. This is exactly what has happened to mass market MMOs as short-term design decisions has created and attracted a complacent, coddled and indolent player population.

In many ways the MMO player-base has become like the fickle mob in the Coliseum of ancient Rome; the MMO companies are much like the emperors: eager to appease the crowd with unhealthy distractions of bread and circuses. Anger the players at your own peril!

Of course we can blame MMO companies for these changes as per Richard Bartle’s astute observations that they need to recruit a constant influx of new players to keep their MMOs financially sound. But there is another reason for why MMOs have become so disappointing and vapid. I’m going to provide some answers and reveal the culprits in Part 2.

-Wolfshead

Post from: Wolfshead Online

The Emasculation of MMOs: Part 1 – How Convenience Replaced Risk

I used to be  a big fan of Steve Jobs and Apple. But lately he’s been acting like a bully and a tyrant. Apple’s unashamed embrace of greed and it’s insatiable need to dominate the universe is troubling. Someone should film an expose on him. Where are Oliver Stone and Michael Moore when you need them?

It’s now clear there’s something rotten to the core at Apple. There’s the glaring disconnect between their actual behavior and carefully crafted public image of Apple being a socially conscious, artsy fartsy, “cool” company. Apple used to be fighting against the man; now Apple is the man.

The list of Apple’s shenanigans is legendary and far too numerous to catalog but here are a few that deserve special mention:

Job’s decision to not allow the iPad to run any Adobe Flash is misguided and not in the best interests of the consumer. Never mind that a host of Adobe anchor applications such as Photoshop and Illustrator helped Apple ingratiate themselves with the liberal arts community that have always been traditional supporters of the Mac.

Then there’s restrictive nature of Apple having to approve all apps for the iPhone and iPad. You can create an app and submit it to Apple and there is no guarantee whatsoever that your app will ever get approved. It’s just another example of how Jobs and company is going against the grain in a consumer culture that has thrived in a free and open marketplace of ideas.

Lately there have been rumblings that the U.S. Justice Department is conducting a preliminary investigations on Apple’s questionable business practices. I think this would be a good way to shake up the insect riddled tree at Apple.

Apple’s overzealous and heavy handed reaction to the person that found that new iPhone and the Gizmodo blog that published the story is more evidence that this is not a nice company.

In a March 2008 Wired Magazine article from entitled How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong the author made this observation:

…Apple is irredeemably evil, behaving more like an old-fashioned industrial titan than a different-thinking business of the future. Apple operates with a level of secrecy that makes Thomas Pynchon look like Paris Hilton. It locks consumers into a proprietary ecosystem. And as for treating employees like gods? Yeah, Apple doesn’t do that either.

Which brings us to the latest tragic story of the workers at Apple’s Chinese factory committing suicide. Here’s what Steve Jobs doing his best Marie “Let them eat cake…” Antoinette had to say about it in piece by the Guardian:

You go in this place and it’s a factory but, my gosh, they’ve got restaurants and movie theatres and hospitals and swimming pools. For a factory, it’s pretty nice,’ he said.

What would Steve Jobs ever know about what it’s like to work in a factory? Is this man for real? He seems to lack even the most basic comprehension of the average life of a Chinese factory worker. These workers don’t have the time to use all these amenities — they are too busy working their asses off on the production floor to make Steve Jobs and his rock-star buddies rich.

These facilities are there for one reason: to make the factory look appealing to potentially new employees. Many companies employ similar deceptions with so-called amenities that the average worker never gets to use because they are working 16 hours a day.

I’d like to see the out of touch Jobs spend a day in that factory doing the job of a worker that makes iPhones. He or any of his precious executive team would not last 10 minutes on the shop floor. You’d think that a man who recently had a liver transplant and claims to be a Buddhist would have a more enlightened understanding and respect for humanity by ensuring that the people that make his plastic toys have better working conditions.

But maybe there is a way to rehabilitate Mr. Jobs. I’d like to see Steve find the courage to sign up for an episode of Undercover Boss, a popular TV show were you guessed it — bosses go undercover and see what life is really like in the trenches as an employee. It would be the perfect way for Steve to begin to repair his tattered image and in the process give him some much needed compassion and perspective.

-Wolfshead

Post from: Wolfshead Online

Apple’s Steve Jobs Should Do An Episode of Undercover Boss

Admittedly, I’ve fallen out of love with MMOs.  After 11 years of being passionately involved in this pursuit and having the patience of a saint, the same old predictable formula of endless DIKU MUD/EQ/WoW clones has failed to keep my interest.

This situation is akin to a personal relationship where one person keeps growing and the other person fails to grow. In the case of MMOs, they are stuck in a state of perpetual adolescence. Refusing to mature into adulthood. Refusing to reach their potential as exciting immersive interactive experiences. I feel like I’m living in an abusive relationship. I want a divorce.

As each year passes MMOs have become more infantile and simplistic in order to pander to the lowest common denominator. This alarming trend has been caused by the need for companies to grow the demographic in order to placate shareholders. We’ve known about this problem for years now thanks to the insight offered by virtual world prophet Richard Bartle. Somehow we never thought that day would never come but reality tells us we are watching this apocalypse unfold before our very eyes.

The FarmVille Curse

To make matters worse, this past year we’ve had to endure all of the hoopla about Zynga’s social networking wunderkind FarmVille. Why? Because for many in the industry FarmVille has become a beacon to the promised land of milk and honey. Purposely crafting an addiction so you can squeeze bags of money out of your players has become the noblest virtue in the video game industry. What a sad and tragic fate that has befallen a genre I used to love.

FarmVille is a despicable, worthless piece of anti-social rubbish that has no business even being called a video game let alone an online world.  Yet it is being hailed as the savior of the video game industry by the MMO intelligentsia.

But there is lots of blame to go around…

Shame on You Blizzard

I put the sorry state of MMOs today squarely at the feet of the technicians who sold their souls at Blizzard Entertainment. For years they have been carefully and methodically concocting an addiction that is designed to keep you playing and paying long after there is any legitimate reason to do so.

Year after year they have squandered billions of dollars of revenues and have failed to advance the MMO genre in any meaningful way. Let’s be honest here, what earth shattering innovations has Blizzard introduced into the MMO universe?

• NPC’s with exclamation marks above their heads?
• Solo to the level cap?
• Instanced dungeons?
• Arenas?
• Daily quests?
• Overpowered hero class?
• Achievements?
• The Dungeon Finder tool?

In every case, the addition of these features has created unintended consequences that have caused far more problems than they’ve ever solved. In the past I’ve written extensively on most of these issues and I don’t feel the need to repeat myself.

The End of Community

Perhaps the greatest sin of Blizzard is their legacy with regard to the erosion and trivialization of the notion of community. The caliber of the player community has hit an all time low. The WoW of 2010 is a MMO where community barely exists if at all. Players don’t even talk to each other anymore as they mindlessly farm so-called heroic dungeons. Players are happy to use each other like cheap whores in order to farm more emblems in order to get more shiny purple pixels.

The current state of community in WoW is not what massively multi-player was supposed to be. Blizzard has given the notion of community lip-service as it has become a marketing talking point instead of something that should be a fundamental tenet of a real MMO. Just visit the official Blizzard forums or your local trade channel to experience the sophomoric angst for yourself for evidence of the abysmal state of community in WoW.

Regrettably the importance of developing relationships with fellow players has been minimized in the WoW reward scheme that is the underpinning of game design at Irvine. Using their bag of Skinner box tricks, Blizzard has willfully programmed selfishness and avarice into the psyche of the modern MMO player via the mechanics of WoW. I’ve seen good people lose their souls and morph into ruthless Jason Bourne robots because of WoW.

I remember people who I used to play with back in good old days of EverQuest who migrated to WoW with me back around 2004-2005. Within months they had changed completely. They were too busy soloing to care about grouping. Why? Because they could — because Blizzard promoted it.

Don’t Be Fooled by Blizzards Bogus Cataclysm

I hate to be the bearer of bad news to those of you those of you that still play WoW, but the upcoming Cataclysm expansion is not the cure for the sickness that plagues MMOs. All it will do is put a fresh coat of paint on a tedious and predictable MMO that is painfully years past its prime and is sadly plunging the rest of industry into oblivion with it.

If Blizzard had any courage they’d unleash a real cataclysm in Azeroth — not the phony one they have planned. WoW needs a complete and total flood-like cleansing that would make Noah proud. A complete and total server wipe would do it. Everything gone. All your precious epics, characters and bank mules. That’s exactly what WoW needs right now. If we want something better then we need to have the conviction of the pilgrims leaving their restrictive homeland and arriving to the freedom of America on the Mayflower. We need to start all over.

Do you think that anyone at Blizzard would have the guts to do it? Not a chance.

The problem is that within a few months everything would be back to normal. You see the problem with WoW is a systemic flaw inherent in all of today’s MMOs — they are basically a numbers game heavily disguised by lots of polish and eye-candy. How many people do you know that played WoW 6 years ago are still playing? Most of them have figured out the equation and moved on. And therein lies the heart of the problem.

You Get the MMO You Deserve

Blizzard has seduced and fooled us with their Hollywood polish. We traded in the important exhilarating virtues of being part of a virtual world — community, camaraderie, danger, player interdependence, role-playing and player freedom– and instead opted for a safe and scripted amusement park ride.

There’s an old saying that goes like this: people get the government they deserve. This same logic applies to MMOs: players get the MMO they deserve because ultimately we vote with our dollars.

As long as is there are copious amounts of reward with almost no risk, as long as content remains static and non-dynamic, as long as players have no sense of ownership in their world, as long as players have no need of other players, as long as player freedoms keep getting curtailed, as long as extracting money from subscribers is the end all and be all of game design — you will have the disease that is World of Warcraft.

The only explanation I can fathom for the lack of evolution in the genre is that Blizzard is purposely withholding all of their innovations for their upcoming next gen MMO which I predict will be announced at this year’s BlizzCon. Until their new MMO is released, they are going to milk the WoW cash cow for as long as possible by expending the least amount of resources to get the maximum amount of return on investment. Thank you Emperor Palpatine.

We Need a Real Cataclysm

When I survey today’s MMO scene I wonder what God must have felt like when He looked at the mess that humanity had gotten itself into. It’s no wonder He decided to create a flood that would reboot humanity and start fresh.

As it stands today, I feel the same way about the MMO industry. They’ve been serving us the same unimaginative crap for the last 11 years and putting a colorful bow on it. And you know what? We keep paying for it.

This industry is caught up in a vicious circle. Every new MMO company grovels and trembles in the shadow of WoW. They are prisoners of the Blizzard success formula. So instead of things getting better, they’ve gotten worse. We need a real cataclysm. The time for excuses are over. It’s time to start over.

Conclusion

Back in the early days of MMO, the player community was intelligent, passionate and vocal. I recall Woody Hearn’s May 2004 boycott of EverQuest which for a few fleeting weeks galvanized the EQ community and put lazy and corrupt MMO companies on notice that we’re not going to take your shoddy crap any more. The lethargic MMO community of 2010 doesn’t have the courage, maturity and will to carry out that kind of public boycott today. They are like the glassy eyed, brain addled denizens of an opium house. They are just too stoned to care.

Almost every major WoW website is in some way beholden to Blizzard lest they lose their precious press access and junkets to Irvine. No one dares boycott or take a stand against them. Just like in the real world, for the most part we have a lazy video game press that are cheerleaders and enablers of the status quo. Has anyone in the press seriously questioned the lack of innovation coming from Blizzard?

In the absence of a legitimate video game press the responsibility falls on us the MMO community. Maybe we are the real problem.

We need to stop playing the same unoriginal MMOs out there and cancel our accounts. We need to stop supporting lazy companies that refuse to innovate and reinvest adequate funds into their MMOs. We need to stop playing MMOs until something worthwhile comes out.

Let me close with another relationship metaphor, we all know a friend or family member that absolutely needs a man or woman to get by. Perhaps we too need to be single and independent for a while and take a break from the MMO hamster wheel. What I’m going to say will sound trite but it needs to be said: read a book, take up a hobby, plant a real garden, walk a dog, spend some time with your family and friends, seek out the meaning of life. Get some perspective and open your eyes. At least for me, maybe I need to realize that there’s more to this life than looking at a computer screen and hoping for salvation from a virtual world.

-Wolfshead

Post from: Wolfshead Online

Why the MMO Industry Needs a Real Cataclysm

Once upon a time as a teenager, I recall being exposed to a book called Future Shock by futurist Alvin Toffler. Along with many wild and outlandish predictions about the future, Toffler described the shock component of his book’s title as being “too much change, in too short a period of time”.

That quote may well characterize the plight of many of us in today’s society and in particular those of us interested in the ever changing landscape of MMO and video game production.

Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about the future of video games. Many of us are contemplating the meteoric financial success of social networking games like Farmville and are scratching our collective heads and wondering what it all means for both game designers and players.

While doing research for an upcoming article for my website I stumbled across an video of Carnegie Mellon University Professor Jesse Schell’s amazing Feb 2010 Design Outside the Box talk at D.I.C.E. (Design Innovate Communicate Entertain). I originally planned on using this video in that article but I have since decided it’s just far too good and deserves special mention on its own.

If you are even remotely interested in the possible future of our culture and video games — are wondering why things are the way they are — then this is probably the best 28 minutes you’ll spend. Sit back and enjoy!

-Wolfshead

Post from: Wolfshead Online

The Most Important Video You’ll Watch This Year

It goes without saying that Peter Jackson’s Academy Award winning Lord of the Rings movies were a boon to the fantasy genre of fiction and film.  Not only did these fantasy films introduce a whole new generation of readers to the meticulously conceived world of Middle-earth designed by Oxford philology professor  J.R.R. Tolkien they also put a lot of cash into the coffers Tolkien Enterprises and of course the Tolkien Estate

After the release of the movies, Professor Tolkien who died in 1973 was included on Forbes List of Top Earning Dead Celebrities for a few years. He even made the 2009 list!

Given the fact that Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro are making two new Hobbit movies that are due to be released in 2012, I can guarantee that there will be yet another Tolkien renaissance.

So given this almost certainly bright future for all things Tolkien, what plans does Turbine who makes the Lord of the Rings Online MMO have in store to capitalize on this anticipated event?

The Challenge of Making a Lord of the Rings MMO

From the outset, the challenge of making a MMO based on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings has been how to integrate the player into the world and storyline of the trilogy. The strength of Lord of the Rings has always been the compelling story but paradoxically it’s also been its biggest weakness due to its sense of predictability and inevitability. We all know how this story ends: the ring is destroyed in Mount Doom and Sauron is finally vanquished.

Another big problem with basing a MMO on a book is that it is finite in nature. In this case, eventually the plot runs out and the LOTRO MMO reaches a dead end in Mount Doom in the land of Mordor.

Since MMOs require a steady release of new content via expansions and given the fact that Turbine is running out of official material, it’s in their best interest to delay players getting to Mordor as long as possible. So they wisely decided to have the player who plays either a dwarf, elf or man following in the wake of heroes Frodo, Aragorn and Gandalf (otherwise known as the Fellowship of the Ring). It is this tactic that has enabled Turbine to extend the content from the trilogy and allow players to have their own adventures and indulge in various detours along the way.

For example, Angmar the fortress of the Witch King does not play a central role in the Lord of the Rings yet Turbine wisely included it as playable content in their MMO. In the latest LOTRO expansion entitled appropriately the Siege of Mirkwood, Dol Guldur the former stronghold of Sauron is featured prominently.

Turbine’s Precedent

Given these two plot deviations, Turbine has set a precedent that the actual Lord of the Rings storyline need not be followed to the letter in their MMO. Therefore it is entirely conceivable that Turbine could halt the Fellowship indefinitely while players make their way to experience the locations described in the Hobbit.

It makes perfect sense that Turbine would want to capitalize on the probability that legions of theater goers who just saw the Hobbit movie and are hungry for more, would want to experience the events of the Hobbit themselves and possibly subscribe to LOTRO.

So how could Turbine achieve this?

The main problem with integrating content from the Hobbit book/movie is that the time-line is out of whack as it takes place many years before the events of the Lord of the Rings. By the time Frodo and Sam have left their beloved Shire, the main events and some characters from the Hobbit are long past. For example, Smaug the dragon has long been dead and the Battle of the Five Armies is just a bed time story for young hobbits.

Solution 1: A Stroll Down Memory Lane

Turbine could have players make a detour to the north east region of Middle-earth and have players experience the lands of the Hobbit as they are now instead of as they were. While this would be more respectful of the actual chronology of Middle-earth it would end up being dull unless some *new* evil has arisen there (the oldest fantasy plot trick in the book).

The problem is players fresh from the movie theater might feel betrayed if there is no Smaug to fight or Battle of the Five Armies at the Lonely Mountain.

Solution 2: Using the Ghost Device

Another favorite trick is resurrecting villains by using the ghost trick. Have Smaug and the orcs as well as the various armies come back as ghosts haunting the areas they used to inhabit. Tolkien himself used this contrivance with the undead “oath-breakers” in the Lord of the Rings chapter where Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas braved the Paths of the Dead.

While this could be done it would lack the immediacy and authenticity of experiencing the actual events as per Solution One.

Solution 3: The Time Machine

Turbine’s MMO competitor Blizzard has used a clever mechanic to let players experience content that transpired before the start of the events of World of Warcraft by devising a place called the Caverns of Time where various portals exist that let players travel back in time to relive important events. This is basically a MMO version of a time machine.

Turbine could do the same thing and let players experience all of the major events from both Hobbit movies by creating some form of cleverly disguised time machine. This would open up a lot of possibilities for the inclusion of some of Tolkien’s best content from the Silmarillion which is the precursor to the events in both the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings — the only two books that Tolkien allowed to be licensed.

One potential problem would be to get this mechanic approved by Tolkien Enterprises. But given some of the things I’ve seen in LOTRO I think it wouldn’t be a problem.

One perplexing problem for fans of Middle-earth has been the fact that the Tolkien Estate run by Christopher Tolkien (J.R.R. Tolkien’s son) has thus far refused to license any of Tolkien’s works outside of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  By doing this they are preventing gamers and potential new readers from being exposed to the brilliant and sumptuous pre-history of Middle-earth. Another by product of this stubbornness is that they are depriving the various charities that the Tolkien Estate supports of the proceeds from the revenues from licensing these books.

Solution 4: Do Nothing

It’s quite possible that Turbine might consider both above options and decide to play it safe and do nothing. Given that Turbine is a business that is out to turn a profit I think this is highly unlikely.

Conclusion

Turbine released the Lord of the Rings Online back in April of 2007. By that time the initial buzz and euphoria that surrounded the release of the Peter Jackson movies released earlier in the decade had faded somewhat.

However, this time things are different and everything seems to be in perfect alignment for a major Tolkien resurgence in 2012. Turbine has the right MMO in place that can take advantage of this. They also have ample time to get their aging MMO shipshape with a new expansion and a state of the art face lift — if they are smart.

If Turbine decides to capitalize on the two upcoming Hobbit movies, it will doubtless prove to be a challenge to do this beloved story justice and present it to the gamer with the respect that it deserves.

-Wolfshead

Post from: Wolfshead Online

How will Turbine Capitalize on the Upcoming Hobbit Movies?